Friday, December 13, 2013

Transforming Grief into Action

by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen

I was looking through boxes and boxes of old
photographs, not just for fun, but as part of a larger project of bringing to
fruition the many years of effort my mother had put into writing her memoir.
She never finished the project, now she is gone, and the Holy One of Blessing
is breathing down my back and leaving me no choice but to finish the work she
had so intensely devoted so much of her time to for so many years.

My mother was a master photographer, an artist
through and through, and the best of her work speaks deeply what words cannot
convey. She knew she was a gifted artist, but she was never able to admit that
she was also a gifted writer. She tells the story of her life – her unusual
childhood with many long trips into the wilderness and to remote places of the world,
her family's history, her college years, her emotional breakdowns and
hospitalizations, her learning, always, always her learning, her teaching, and
then her poetry and her philosophy, and at the end, her old age – all of this
she tells with skill and wisdom and writing both adept and beautiful. And
interspersed throughout her text are her photographs, taken mainly in the
second half of her life as she slowly and painfully learned how to live in this
world, but also from her youth. Also included are photographs take by her
father on his many trips around the world, some from before the turn of the
20th century.

But it is not the exquisite photographs of my
mother’s later years that strike me this particular day. Rather, it is the many
photographs from my childhood home in rural southwestern Wisconsin. My father was a professor at the University of Wisconsin
in Madison, and
when I was seven years old, my parents bought an old farmhouse and part of a
farm – 70 acres – half an hour west of the University. There I spent my
formative years, there I lived with my mother’s breakdowns and extended
hospitalizations in the psychiatric ward of one or the other of the Madison hospitals, and there
I lived close to and fell in love with the land.

So much of my childhood was spent outdoors! In
grade school, I often walked home with my brother or one or more of the
neighbor children, frequently pausing at the culvert over the stream to search
for tadpoles and other signs of life. With a neighbor, a brother, a parent, or a
friend, and frequently happily by myself, we explored every nook and cranny of
our 70 acres, and often went further afield into the neighbors’ land as well.
We sledded and tobogganed down hills, between trees, and over mounds of snow that
sent us flying. We raised a variety of animals – mine were the chickens and the
goats.

We played in the barn, the loft sometimes full of hay, sometimes empty.
We played in the neighbor’s barn and beside and in their pond. We watched the storms roll up the valley.We climbed to
the top of the windmill, no longer functioning, its pump having been wired for
electricity. We fashioned a make-believe home on a tiny island in the stream.
We waded the stream in search of pretty stones and water striders. We examined
and identified flowers. We gardened. We opened our home for walks,
wood-cutting, hearty food, and fellowship. We struggled to get out of our
driveway during snowy winters. We lived close to the land.

As I thumbed through picture after picture from my
years on this land, longing and grief welled in my heart, and I felt tears in
my eyes. How I miss that close connection to the Earth! And then, as the days
went on, and I realized that I could not functionally remain in that place of
grief for long, I began to understand. I began to understand that it is the
deep love of the land that developed in me during my childhood and young
adulthood that fuels the fires of so much of what I am passionate about in my
later adulthood: Ma’yan Tikvah – a vehicle for praying outdoors with others;
Wayland Walks – a program designed to get people outdoors onto the trails in our
own community; working on climate campaigns – I do so desperately want for our
children to inherit the Earth.

Those photographs helped me better understand,
they helped me see the depth of my passion and my commitment to the Earth. They
helped me better understand why I am pushing forward with all that is closest
to my heart. They helped me better understand just why the things I do are so
close to my heart.

I think of Aldo Leopold, who spent his most famous
years in Wisconsin,
his land ethic for our time, and the efforts of the Aldo Leopold Foundation to keep his legacy alive. Closer to home, I read Changes to the Land: Four Scenarios of the Future of the Massachusetts Landscape, and I
know that although there is hope, there is also a recognition that so many of
the decisions we make today will determine whether or not it will be possible
for future generations to have even a taste of the experiences I had as a child.
Looking back on my mother’s life, I know she must have thought something very
similar, I know she mourned the possibility of experiencing the places she had
cherished in the same way that she had. And when I consider the impact of
climate change, the urgency of the issues regarding our planet can set my heart
to racing and disturb my sleep at night.

One
Earth, and only one. That is all we have. What will we pass on to future
generations? The answer is up to us, to you and to me. We are the ones who make
the decisions that determine the future. And so I continue to do the work I do,
each passing year with a greater sense of urgency. This is how I channel my
grief. This is how I assuage my guilt. This is how I keep my head and my heart
above water and maintain the faith needed to go forward day by day.

I
invite you to join me and/or others in doing the passionate work l’ovdah u’l’shomrah,
to serve and to protect (Gen. 2:15) this One Earth that is sacred to us all,
crucial to our physical, spiritual, and emotional wellbeing, and threatened by
the very ones who depend upon it.

May
we find the strength and the courage and the fortitude to truly guard and
preserve this land and all that lives upon it.

by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen I teach a class called Loss & Transformation: Connecting Sacred Texts to Family Stories to Help Deal with Lo...

Ma'yan Tikvah - A Wellspring of Hope

Ma'yan Tikvah is a congregation without walls in Wayland, MA, that holds services outdoors year round. It is a place of hope and trust for those seeking a meaningful connection to Judaism through study, prayer, experiences of nature, care of the environment, and social justice. Founded and guided by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen, Ma'yan Tikvah provides a place to explore Judaism in an informal and inclusive setting.